The night at the strip club had ended hastily. Though still full of many questions, Margot seemed to have heard enough for one night. For fear of overloading her mind, and because she didn't want to stay in that setting for much longer, she had bailed via Uber soon after. Offered to split the ride with Ned if he wanted, otherwise-- well, it was 2016. They could get in touch.
The next week Ned had reached out to Margot first, as was becoming their pattern. They should compare understandings and, perhaps even more resoundingly, they should compare their works.
"Craft," Margot had said in the conversation. That was what she'd decided she was calling it. It was what it felt like. "Like a witch."
They ultimately landed on staying at Margot's apartment for this. She lived in a part of town where nobody really minded loud noises and smells could be blamed on the small Thai restaurant that occupied the building next door. She lived in a studio that was built into a mundane four-story brick building, up on the top floor (which was a pain in the ass for groceries but Margot didn't seem to mind the climb anymore [no elevators, sorry, the building's too old]).
Built in the early 1910's, the apartment hosted hardwood floors and was, as most studios were, simply a large room with dark floors and white walls (decorated sparsely, as evidence of her prior claim to being new to town). Her bed was in the corner opposite the door and hidden behind a paper divider, a single couch, coffee table, and small dining table squeezed in with a kitchenette. There were a couple of plants here and there, including a fern hanging by a small wood door that leaned out to a similarly small (you get the theme here) balcony.
It wasn't the best part of the city for a girl to live on her own, but Margot seemed to do a decent job of flying under the radar even without people supernaturally forgetting her face and name.
"It's a little cramped," she apologized when they were both there and the front door was closed and locked behind them. "But, y'know, college student."
Ned
"-College." Ned said simultaneously, overlapping Margot's apology with an understanding line of his own.
He was dressed in a long coat, a soft gray strip beneath each armpit that went to the hem, while the rest was felt black. Jeans and a sweater with the faded lettering of some school sports team, that was no longer translatable, the navy blue colour faded from too many washes. He slipped his boots off without undoing the laces, a brief struggle ensuing before setting them off to one side (on a shoe mat if available).
His eyes take in the interior, hand rising to brush the toque from his head, stuffing it into the jacket pocket.
"Balcony. Heh. Talk about luxury." He nods toward the egress.
"Crafting. Working." Ned seemed to shrug through both words, not quite comfortable with either. The word Witch brought a vague smirk to his face as he pushed a little deeper into the apartment, hunting down a spot on the couch.
"That's a bit gender biased, don't you think? What does that make me? A Warlock?"
Margot
"I think it's gender-biased to say that you couldn't be a witch yourself." The smirk was returned, if briefly, and Margot made some vague gesture straight ahead from the door, indicating that he was welcome to settle at the table or couch. She herself walked into the kitchenette and went about the steps to make coffee.
Small kitchens were stacked high to save space, so she had to stretch and nudge things down from the higher shelf, but at no point did she seem to want or necessarily need help going about the process. One cannot doubt that she's gone through these same steps many times before.
As she did, she continued on across the cramped space.
"I think you'd need to figure out what makes your craft work to figure out what you wanna call yourself first, though. Mine feels pretty...." She waved her hand vaguely, trying to describe the feeling of doing actual magic. "You know... like it should be happening out in a forest somewhere in autumn, under capes and candles and with blood and earth and the like." Blood. Always the blood. But that was what they were here to talk about, wasn't it?
Ned
"Solving." A pause. "Half the time that's what it feels like. I'm solving some equation or shape or pattern." He offers as she busies herself in the kitchen. He doffs his jacket, settling on the couch rather comfortably, the coat left to dangle off the arm of the couch. Not so much at home as he is staking a spot out to get comfortable in. His gaze runs the apartment still, trying to parse details about Margot's life based mostly on what she populates the landscape of it with. So far, sparse college student fits the description.
"Blood is...part of it." He calls out, agreeing. "Not the entirety though and I don't think Candles really do much. Or...capes or...what time of year it is. I've never tried anything in a forest mind you so anything's possible I suppose-" He sounds skeptical, per usual. Whatever they had sourced out or found out with the Doc's first lesson, had settled in Ned's mind and he had gone to the trouble of taking at least some of it to heart. If only for a place to begin.
"Given your...well Avatar-" He still felt weird saying that, unable to get the image of giant Blue Aliens out of his head. "-it's not surprising you lean on that imagery."
"My own, so far as I get it, seems to run the gamut of Blood...Touch or contact...Pain is a big one-...not terribly excited about that one, mind you." The last part is a murmur, accompanied by another frown, his eyes finding the balcony and the city beyond with a vague distance to his seeing.
"...But those don't really support how I view it all. It's borderline scientific. Or at least, pragmatic. Do what you need to do, to sort out what the Avatar wants." He shakes his head. "I'm not calling it that by the way. It's a ridiculous name."
Margot
While the coffee was brewing in an inexpensive machine on the countertop, Margot walked across the space and turned around the dining chair nearest to the arm of the couch. Hauled it out away from the table so it was closer to gathered around the coffee table than not and settled into it for the time being.
"You're so literal." She was shaking her head. "It's more thematic than anything."
As he spoke of what he found made magic work for him, she frowned empathetically at how pain seemed to drive things stronger than anything else so far. It seemed to be something that she was commiserating with-- not the pain directly, but rather having something about the paradigm that he didn't like.
"I don't care for how these things are built in. We don't get to choose ourselves. It had sounded so much like building your own belief system, what Doc was saying, but it's built in already. Attached to and associated with the .... Avatar." She found herself pausing, based on his assessment of that word, then grinned a little bit in agreement. "It is pretty dumb. Plus, I don't think of her as being mine."
A glance at the painting that was hanging behind the couch-- some big piece of canvas under an inexpensive frame, abstract rough brushwork made to resemble a forested landscape only if you looked at it correctly (signed for her, from a friend apparently).
"It's more like it's the other way around."
Ned
"I think it's not so much built in, as fallout from how we Emerged." A pause, glancing at her. "Awakened." He knew it was a touchy subject. Seemed to register her discomfort before it had a chance to really bloom around her memories of it, and pushed on with his own.
"I got into a Car Crash. I don't remember it very much but what I do recall...there was a lot of blood. A lot of pain, involved. I don't...remember much about either of those things? But I know they were there. I know how strong a representation they both were at the moment it all happened. Which tells me my brain, mind or-...Guide." He smiles, small but genuine. "My Guide, associated all the most obvious things in the crash with whatever changes occurred during the Emergence. Blood, Pain-" He pauses. His face going slack, like realization, epiphany or...
He's scrubbing his face for a moment, palms in his eyes trying to push back at some memories or emotion-
"I don't envy you that." He looks up at her, a sad smile on his face. "That sensation of being 'owned'. Like you're in debt to it. I get it. I don't feel that way but I get it. It's scary...part of me thinks that's a bit of a representation..." Head shaking. "Sorry, I just mean, the answers we want, the comforts we're looking for. Maybe we need to go down roads we're scared of. The Doc seemed to suggest as much anyway if we're ever going to do these...Seekings."
Another face. Another word he didn't seem to have a taste for.
Margot
When Ned took his hands away from his eyes after scrubbing his revelation away from them, he'd find Margot watching him carefully, quizzically. She recognized that something significant had occurred. However, offering the same respect that he did the memory of her own Awakening, she did not pry. Instead she just smiled back and shrugged one shoulder in a loose 'what do you do' gesture.
"It seems like everyone's magic is bestowed upon them differently. Maybe in some people it's.... genetic, y'know? Maybe other times it's gifted to them by spirits and gods, or enchanted items like with Doc's book. Maybe sometimes it's a matter of enough force releasing, like in a car accident, in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time. Y'know, triggering some kind of energy backlash on a leyline or something." Recognizing the sound of grasping at straws in her own voice, Margot frowned a little bit and stopped.
Thankfully it was at that time that the coffee pot rattled and hissed to indicate that it was finished with its task. She took the opportunity to stand up and retreat to another task for a moment. When she returned with both coffees fixed up (how do you take yours?), she passed a gray mug, heavy and deep, to Ned, and kept a petite white one for herself. She set her own mug down on her coffee table and straightened up in the chair. She adjusted the couple of bobby pins that were pinning her hair out of her face and looked to Ned with a questioning raise of her eyebrows.
"So. What should we try?"
Ned
"What do you know is more the question."
He throws back, a chuckle in his voice, reaching to take the cup of coffee and set it down on the table to cool. He set his knees up, elbows on either, leaning forward to regard the table and the coffee for a moment of consideration.
"So far I've had inklings of Health? Or medicine? A general sense of well-being in living things. Not just people, but anything alive with a circulatory system or a beating heart or...well no that's not true. Plants as well. I've seen the insides of their structures and make up pretty clearly when I was Solving their patterns." At least one word, seemed to have stuck from the Doc's lesson. Patterns made sense of Ned. Gave everyone and everything a 'Lowest Common Denominator'.
"There's...what did he call it?? Forces? Which is as good a word as any for it, really. Various forces that exist within Nature. Electricity was the easiest for me to notice. Bright blue lines existing inside and around various things. Electromagnetic...uhh...halos and.....pressures. That one might be best to leave alone for now though." The fear and nervousness in his voice says his experiences with Forces were not the most pleasant.
"...And tangible Matter." He taps the coffee mug, the table. "That one seems to register differently than the Life, living thing. I can sort out the composition of various materials, divide them into different components. Part Cotton, Part Polyester. I think if I knew a bit more about what I was looking at, I could probably tell you a more approximate percentage split on the materials this Coat of mine is made up of-" He plucked at his jacket sleeve, still draped over the couch arm. "I also know there are several threads loose or frayed that make it signficantly weaker under the right arm and along the hem."
His gaze finds her again, brows rising expectantly.
Margot
Margot blushed only the tiniest bit when Ned reminded her that she was jumping the gun. What could they do, first. She sat scooted back in her chair, and with a body small as hers it was no trouble to bring her feet up onto the seat as well.
She was wearing a thin yellow sweatshirt with a hood along with a pair of skinny-legged dark jeans, and sat with her legs crossed indian-style and leaned forward with her hands rested together on her ankles. The apartment wasn't very chilly-- one good thing about the building being so old was that it was set up with radiant heat. All the same, Margot tugged her hood up over the back of her head and listened while Ned described what he was able to Sense and Understand now.
Nodding in agreement, Margot stretched a lean arm forward to grab her coffee, then leaned back with it cradled in both hands when she was sure it was cool enough to sip.
"About the same things-- the living, the matter, the forces. Plus I can sense when magic's been used." She paused, then added almost doutfully-- "and spirits." She cleared her throat and expounded on the last two.
"There's always something that goes into the atmosphere when somebody does their craft. Kind of like what we feel from one another, you know? A personal stamp that's left behind and there's just this lingering... sense and taste of it still. Like a memory." That one was easier to explain. The hesitant look on her face and how she partially hid it behind her coffee mug suggested uncertainty on how she'd be perceived with this next one.
"And spirits-- ghosts and more, that's all real. I know when they're around. They're different, ghosts and spirits. Spirits are still attached to someone, or they're over on the Other Side. If they're neither of those two things they're misplaced, and a lot of the time that's because a person's spirit didn't pass properly. It makes a ghost." She cleared her throat a little, paused for a sip, and added:
"Makayla and I ran into a ghost at a frat house. We didn't stick around to find out what it's deal was or to solve its problems for it-- it was making frat boys attack us."
Ned
"Well we're Witches and Warlocks and Magicians and Mad Scientists. Why not ghosts, right?" Ned shrugs. At this point, it would be hypocritical and ludicrous to deny the boundaries of what was and could be. He had been expounding on whether God existed and whether He/She/(It?) was republican a week or so ago. Ghosts were the least of his concerns or considerations. It was nice to know it was a possibility though.
"The other side." Ned's eyes narrow at that. "The Doc mentioned that as well. An attached world to ours which...I'm going to flat out admit right now, scares the crap out of me. Afterlives have never been something people have been comfortable with. We go-" He pauses. Clears his throat. They had to get used to this distinction. "-People goto war, kill each other and promise all sorts of cancerous hate on themselves for the chance to send someone else to Hell or claw their way into a Heaven. The possibility those exist...in all the myriad forms that Humanity has invented over the years...millenia? Well yeah." I don't envy you that one, Dear, he didn't say it, mind you but it was there. Implied.
He's drinking generously from his coffee now, the progress and expansion of thought (without a Teacher around to curb that thought) seemed to energize him to participate.
"Making frat-...like possession?" And suddenly the thought of not being able to see these things much less defend against them, brought a whole set of new nerves in Ned's system to life.
Margot
"Exactly like possession. One of the gals that was there at the party had to bean one of them with a fire extinguisher." She pressed her mouth into a grim line when she realized the gravity of that. They could have just killed some poor guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like she said, they didn't exactly stick around for very long.
She sipped her coffee for a few quiet moments, thoughtful. When she spoke again she did so quiet, thoughtful, and slow.
"The one who chose me... She's this goddess of war, I think. Andraste. Or... Morrigan, I think she's been called? If she's a goddess of war, I think that means that I'm expected to have something to do with war as well." She looked afraid of the prospect. "I didn't bust my ass getting into college to go to join ISIS seeking war on half the world. I--"
She stopped suddenly, for it sounded like she was about to start rambling nervously. It was clear that she fretted what her Avatar may ask of her, with this relationship of debt that she seemed to have with it. Margot didn't look much like a soldier. She was a scholar. A goddamn 19 year old girl who thought maybe she would be an ecologist and fight global warming when she grew up but now there was this big magical wrench being thrown in that plan.
"Doc said not to worry about the boogiemen, but I do. Witch hunts have happened throughout a lot of history. I doubt they've gone away entirely as much as just gone underground."
Ned
"Now who's being literal?" He offers sardonically. It isn't so much dismissive of her concerns, as it is of her attachment to the idea it demands something from her. Ned climbs to his feet, his body telling him to move. He paces around behind the couch to get his feet under him, scratching at his head as he goes.
"The Doc said the Avatar...our Guides? They're part of us. It isn't so much a choice as they've been waiting around, for us to Wake up so they can finally start interacting with us. Enlightenment ahead and all that. Getting us to a better place and time that we can begin to affect Reality-" he throws his hands up and around them, indicating 'Everything' in another small bid of sarcasm "-in these fantastic ways. It doesn't really make a lot of sense to be able to do what we do, while simultaneously being indebted to something for it. Does it?"
He pauses his pacing to stare at her, brow perked.
"You think you're in league to some faustian thing? Or maybe you've just got an overly assertive Guide who's been waiting around for a long time for you to finally open your eyes and is impatient to get on with it." He shrugs, sucking in a large exhale. The pacing starts again.
"Or maybe it's that some guides are more forceful than others. Yours is pretty direct but much like what we do with our power, I get the feeling how we get there is part of our choice as well. Going to War...heh, lots of ways to do that these days that don't involve guns, bullets and Shell shock. Besides...Goddess of War, yeah?"
He perks a brow, face screwing up in sudden thought. Eyes find her again.
"Who says she isn't tired of it and is maybe looking for you to come along and show her a different way? A different path to her means and ends?" A small smirk. Chiding but not cruel. "Gods aren't the most forward thinking of sorts afterall."
Margot
Ned got up and paced, but Margot stayed in her seat with her ankles firmly crossed and her mug still cradled securely in her hands. He wanted to convey to her that she didn't have to put herself in so much of a box of violence, but she only appeared to be moderately receptive to what he was saying. It was one thing to speak of an entity and theorize about its desires, but it was another to be standing before it with its starkly contrasting warpaint and blood-red hair and its teeth red with blood and black with death, speaking with such anger and insistence and demand.
"I don't know," she said quietly. "War and gods were both born of humanity. They're equally old. I don't get the feeling it's something that would be changing. Certainly not what I would be changing."
She tapped her toes on the edge of her seat a couple of times, then set them on the floor and stood up herself. The mug was abandoned on the table, and she jerked her thumb toward the slim wooden door that led out to the balcony.
"How about we go for a smoke and start talking about the craft itself next?"
Ned
"You're not humanity anymore."
Blunt. Obvious. Unapologetic. Ned's eyes don't catch hers, rather he remains in his pacing step, almost as if he were speaking to both of them. Admitting to something he'd concluded a while ago. Time to draw distinctions. Between who they were and what they were now.
"...And really, Gods are the excuse, the ambitious use to goto war. An actual god? A real one? Who knows what they want.-" Go for a Smoke
"Yeah." He interrupts himself. Catches the edge of some bulldozing argument or discussion. Theology among College kids, often times led down paths of...well let's just skip that part and go right to the balcony scene, yeah?
* * * *
Ned leans against the rail, his little pot pipe clutched between thumb and fingers, squinting into the wind this high up that's lashing the building's face. It isn't bitterly cold but there's enough of a chill he's worn his jacket again. The bowl of his pipe is still huffing slightly, the embers charged and dancing with the wind. He exhales a vapour trail that vanishes into the night as quickly as it appears from his mouth.
"At this point-" Cough. "-The Doc says we've got as much to work with as we can sense. I'm not inclined to argue as that's as much as I've recognized about my abilities so far. Like there's this glass ceiling above me that I can't even touch let alone break, inside a room filled who a whole other assortment of....Perceptions. Things to see and touch and smell and taste...Fog cloud of possibility. Just gotta walk around exploring, right?"
He takes another small puff, before holding it out toward her to accept or decline at leisure.
"As far as I can tell, these perceptions give us access to things we normally wouldn't be able to know. Hidden information suddenly made available to us. How that information is used is just like anything really...but without the skills to put half of that new information to use, I doubt we'll be Spiderman and Wonder Woman anytime soon."
Margot
Out on the balcony the space was cramped like everything else, but Margot managed to fit a pair of small chairs and a table that was just barely big enough for two drinks between them. They were using his pipe, but Margot was a gracious host and supplied the green. She stood leaned against a balcony that was mostly chipped of its white paint but held pretty well. The view from the top floor of the building was a pretty decent one, and gave a good view of Denver's general skyline against the wall of mountains behind it.
She had the yellow hood of her sweater up and her brown coat on overtop that. When she wasn't actively using the pipe her hands were in her pockets and out of the chilly air.
"Yeah, pretty much the same. I can't push through or touch or change anything really, not so much as just know it better." Cue the lighter, the ember, the drag-hold-exhale into the night. She was quick to pass it back, and confessed as she did.
"I haven't really tested it out too much yet, to be honest. I've been worried about it. Like, what the repercussions might be. I thought maybe the fact that I had to use blood meant it was a pained craft-- like, maybe I was hurting someone or something every time I did it?" Jesus, girl, shake the guilt. You're a witch, not wrecking the world.
"But," she added, looking up and trying to put on a bit more optimistic of an expression. "Now that I've got a better idea about this Paradox business, I'm going to be testing it out more." She hitched an elbow up on the railing and squinted out through the evening at the outline of the mountains in the distance. "The books that I have talk a lot about rituals, but.... none of that is really very practical."
She looked back over to Ned and cast a sideways grin. "What does one do with the ability to sense everything around them, huh?"
Ned
"A lot."
He turned so his back was to the railing, leaning his weight against the metal bar, while staring forward at the building wall and structure with something like careful scrutiny.
"Given what we know about the...well, Spheres...Categories?" Come back to that. "I could tell you the materials used to make my jacket. Or where in this building, with enough walking time and scanning, I could put a Bomb to bring the entire thing down. Weak points and structural integrity. Or I could-" He offers with a somewhat sheepish shrug "-if I knew much about Architecture. Even then, I think if I had the bomb, I might be able to manage without that level of knowledge. Or do some serious damage, anyway. If I did know about Architecture though, I could, without a doubt. Knowledge supplemented by Perception..."
Then he turns to her.
"Simultaneously, I could use...uhh...Forces? Living-..Life? Maybe both, to track someone through a building. I've done Infrared and x-ray vision before, though...not keen on doing the latter again." He stuffs his face deeper into his collar, trying to hide the vague blush creeping into his features. "With my medical knowledge, I've been able to tell how quickly someone's bleeding out and how much time they've got before they go into cardiac arrest from blood loss. Or how long before their brain stops working due to lack of oxygen."
He turns out into the world, sucking in a slow breath.
"...and Forces." The scary one. "I can walk around the city and tell you where electricity flow is going. I bet if I had training as an electrician? I could probably tell you how much electricity is going into a particular device? Or how much could overload it. Or trace it back to it's source. I think...I could even tell you how much pressure it would take to break a bone...or put it back into place. Sculpt the proper angle for re-locating a shoulder, without much trouble. All of that based on what you and I have access to..."
He smiles.
"That's pretty good, considering we're new."
He takes the pipe back for another haul, sucking in slowly and releasing.
"With your...Ghost? Spirit thing? You can easily track disturbances that could come up. Avoid areas that are heavy with them. Tell me which areas to avoid at that, please, heh. You can also...how did you put it? See the Craft? The magic? Being able to identify and categorize various...feelings and craftings will help us locate others. Or even possibly give us headstarts on avoiding them if we need to..." The boogiemen.
"Knowledge multipled by Perception = New Skill."
Margot
Ned was a talker, but thankfully Margot was a listener. An observer. She nodded along with him here or there, but mostly just stood with her back to the balcony's corner and learned things he's tested and learned he could do. She started smiling a little at the bit about x-ray vision (of a sort), and her resting expression after that was more relaxed. She defaulted toward worried and nervous looking most of the time, so the contrast was notable.
"Yeah, but what do we do with all of that? It seems paltry to just... I don't know, get a job and make lots of money off this cheat code into the world." The wind caught at her hair, so she paused and took her hands from her coat to tug at her hood and tuck the licks of brown back under it again.
"Like you said-- it's Them and it's Us. They're different worlds, what we lived in and what we Awoke to. The question is-- what the hell do I do with all of this power?"
She paused thoughtfully and swallowed. Tapped her fingertips together before putting her hands into her pockets again. This time when she did so her body language went stiff-- shoulders up and elbows straight.
"I think I can learn to heal. I healed when I Awoke."
Ned
"Me too."
It's all he says. The healing thing. There's something...more drastic there, mind you. Ned was a talker and it's all he says about that for a long moment. Staring at the door leading back into her apartment. He just breathes, slowly, settling into his stance. Then-
"Maybe that's what the Guide is for." He posits, finally turning a glance toward her. "What we do with it. There to give you an option on how to proceed. Whether you agree to or rebel against that option or find something else. We improve and progress and toe lines and find ways to work around the new abilities...or with them."
He paused. Coughed gain, hand coming up to muffle the sound into his fist.
"All I know is I'm not a superhero. I don't want to daredevil around the city, beating up muggers and kingpins and mafia folk." A pause. A shrug. Comical. "Frat boys...maybe..."
Margot
The silence there was significant, each of them sinking into their own Awakenings and what all came along with them. An Awakening was a heavy thing for anyone, something that they had all no doubt contemplated on their pillows for hours on end. Ned stared at the structure of her building, and she out into the distance once more.
When he started speaking again she looked back, but she seemed grim all over again. One day she'd have to work through whatever happened, if she wanted to proceed at all with her Avatar and sense of enlightenment. Whether that could happen within a week of realizing this, though, was pretty doubtful indeed.
"No," she agreed with a brisk little shake of her head. "I'm not a superhero. I'm just a survivor." She paused, and grinned back a little, willing the dark cloud that came with recollection away best she could. "Like a Jessica Jones instead of a Wonder Woman."
A moment of thought passed, then Margot voiced something that had occurred to her since the last time they talked magic together.
"I feel like we need to learn more about these traditions first. I expect that finding a group of like-minded folks is going to help a lot of the rest fall into place. We could pick up some tricks of the trade too, I'm sure."
Ned
"Yeaahhh..."
Ned's reluctance comes through in the drawn out avoidance embedded in that one word. He scuffs at the balcony floor with one toe, the rough concrete sticking to and plucking at his thick wool socks which help to rebuff the cold. Enough that he didn't need the hassle of his boots.
"The Doc. He's stubborn, you know? He's got this belief in place that says 'It's work, not magic'. Not just a belief but he knows. At least according to him. I get the feeling that's pretty universal with our...kind. Us. The more you know, the more ugly that Paradox shit hits you but...the more fantastical everything you do, gets as well. That takes guts...belief takes guts. The stronger your belief, the bigger and better you get so...of course the Doc says it strong. Says it like it's the only thing that matters. I think...we lucked out a bit finding someone who is content to let us explore and ask questions like we do. Give us straight answers and just correct our mistakes."
He sends his gaze into the apartment again, frowning openly now.
"I'm not sure these traditions are the same bet. Tradition is something you have in place and adhere to. Ritual and comfort and dogma all at once. Not necessarily a bad thing but...all that Belief, from higher powers than you or I. Fresh faced as we are. Thanks but...no thanks. I want to get my head wrapped around my beliefs, solidified and firm, before I go trusting in someone else, just as stubborn and maybe not as open about all this as the Doc is."
He regards Margot then, eyes bloodshot from the marijuana, squinting in part due to the winds out here.
"Maybe these other Traditions can help. Show you what you need to know. Same time, maybe part of that involves pushing and forcing you to confront that stuff you've been avoiding." He shrugs slightly. "Which maybe you-....maybe we need."
Margot
He had a pretty good point, and that showed in how she furrowed her eyebrows. The Doc just gave them some guidelines and wanted them to go nuts figuring things out for themselves. Somebody else might try impose their own beliefs, and that could create way more conflict down the path to understanding than they needed.
But then, maybe she needed that to make her confront her demons.
Margot's eyes hopped quickly up to Ned's face when he said that part, covered it up quickly with a 'we' instead of 'you', but there was a chance she could take his statement personal. For a moment, it seemed she might have. But then she nodded and looked down at the street below, watching somebody carrying groceries out of their car.
"Nah, you're right." She spoke slow and thoughtful. Looked like she was growing resolve within herself, making some kind of a decision. Perhaps even finding that purpose that she was talking about seeking earlier. What to do with her newfound power.
"I mean, I kind of knew I'd have to go back to Maine sometime. I left a bit of a mess behind."
Ned
(Arete 1: Forces 1 - Watch the Heat. Difficulty 4 - 1 for Tools (Narcotics)
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (5) ( success x 1 )
Ned
"We've got time. More to learn at that."
It's a segue into softer territory. Ned's not one to push at trauama, his fair share a bright haunting in his own head. It isn't a dismissal though, not by far, his hands falling to wrap around the pipe and check the bowl for it's contents. A quick blow and a knock of the metal piece against the railing, empties it out into the wind before he's putting it back in his pocket and lifting off the rail.
"It's cold. Let's continue this back inside."
He pulls the door open.
* * * *
He returns to his coffee, hands scrubbing together to ellicit warmth. A moment of consideration for that gesture slumping back down on the couch and he chuckles. There's a second of pause, making sure Margot is back in the room and settling into her own seat, eyeballing her with those pot-high and squinted eyes.
Then he inhales and sets his hands together, rubbing them like he was warming up. His eyes are on his hands and his breathing is slow.
"...During the Car Crash. There was...something else." A bit of discomfort but he clears his throat. Pushes through it. "I was drunk. Drunk enough, anyway I'm pretty sure that's what happened with the Crash. Or why, anyway-" The air around Ned. In the apartment. It begins to feel...closer. Or there is less of it. A presence similar to the first time they had met, it claws and grasps and seems to horde the oxygen to itself. Makes each lungful a little deeper. A little more desperate but not by much.
"I hadn't touched a lick of alcohol since....well, that Tequila shot with the Doc. Walking home I...sort of figured something out. Put a couple new pieces together from one other time..." His hands are moving fast now, scrubbing together swiftly, the sandpaper like sound lighting the air. His gaze is focused on it, eyes dancing around the space of them.
"...The Alcohol. Not just that but...the Weed too. I think there's something about the state of mind...the change it induces. You're more...receptive to the world. More willing to go with it and less with...what you're been told or taught."
He releases his hands suddenly, lifting them up to stare at his palms, eyes a little wide and dancing between his fingers.
"...Waves of orange and blue. Static and Heat."
Margot
[Arete 1: Spirit - Scan for Hauntings, -1 diff for tool]
Dice: 1 d10 TN3 (1) ( botch x 1 )
Margot
Going back inside was a good idea. It was cold and they'd finished smoking, and the apartment was warm and cozy and the coffee wouldn't have cooled off too much just yet. Ned settled onto the couch, and Margot came to sit back in her chair instead. She'd only had the one hit and seemed fine with that alone, so her eyes didn't show the marijuana too much-- glassier, perhaps, but not by much. She picked up her coffee as well and sip-sipped while watching him rub his hands and listening to him speak.
He was drunk when he crashed. Alcohol triggered his ability to do magic-- he could focus on the altered state of mind as a window through reality, as a way to see what normal eyes could not. Margot nodded-- she suspected something like that. Wondered whether he was the one driving, and if that's why he didn't much care to speak in detail about the crash and the circumstances surrounding it. Again, had the common decency not to ask.
As he watched what heat looked like on his own hands, orange and blue crackling static and heat, the promise of fire that wasn't quite ready to bloom, Margot chewed the inside of her lip thoughtfully, then stood up abruptly.
Into the kitchen, and then back again. She carried with her two things-- the coffee pot and a pairing knife. After topping off their coffee mugs, Margot sat again-- not in her chair, but on the sofa beside him instead. She leaned forward over the coffee table, the knife in one hand, and paused to look back at Ned. A small smile quirked across her mouth and she shrugged her shoulders loosely. "I was thinking I should do this, anyway..."
She then took the pairing knife and pressed it into the pad of her left ring finger, drawing it quickly across the surface to create a small, shallow cut. She hissed quietly at the sting of it, but stayed the course all the same and held the finger out over the surface of the tabletop. Droplets of blood fell onto the surface while Margot concentrated, then pressed the wounded finger down onto the table's surface as well.
As she did this, the air seemed to grow thick and sticky-sickly sweet like blood were clotting on the walls and seeping into the air as well. Then, several seconds in, there was a sudden, small and sharp jolt! in the atmosphere that Ned would pick up on only as a bit of an aftershock-- slight and hardly perceived ripples in reality.
Margot, however, yelped. "Jesus Christ!"
She jerked her arm back, shaking her hand as though it were burning then grabbing her finger and squeezing it tightly in her other palm. She sat on the edge of the couch, curled over her hand while a burning pain worked its way through it. Too distracted to notice herself, but Ned would probably pick up on the fact that the few drops of blood on the coffee table were sizzling and burning their way into the wood as well.
When you play with fire....
Margot
[Soak?]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Margot
[Uh, one more die plz]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Margot
[Unhelpful, but okay]
Ned
Ned watches. His fascination is pretty up there. Dedicated in the same way someone who was High, could actively participate with a brick wall and the patterns it's pock-marked surface relayed. Margot's efforts are given his full attention from the blood-letting (no reaction) to the table where the blood dripped and pooled (a slight frown) to the sudden sizzle and yelp of 'blasphemy' from Margot (a brief start and wide eyed surprise).
He leans forward, glancing at her on his way with an
"Are you alright?"
Followed closely by an eye down at the table surface with it's sizzling blood and stench of acrid, dissolving wood. His head tilts to the side, features cast in a grimace of confusion. He's still staring at the table, pushing a bit closer to her on the couch to get a firm view of the effect, when he says abruptly.
"What...the hell did you just try to do? Did you mean to melt the table? Are you even capable of that yet?!" Clearly a bit frazzled, leaning back from the stench with a waving hand, clearing his nostrils and coughing in the suddenly cloying air. Finally getting around to looking at her in confused alarm.
Margot
Thankfully the bad blood didn't burn completely through the tabletop, but it did scar the surface permanently. She didn't answer verbally when asked if she was alright, but nodded quickly and kept her jaw clenched shut. Waiting for a break in the burning that was working its way through the cut in her finger and back up her forearm before it would disappate, as though the burning of the blood was running back into her veins as well.
After he had enough time to ask if she was actively trying to make the table melt or not, Margot was finally able to relax her muscles enough to let go of her finger and glance hesitantly at her finger.
Cringing, she turned to show it to Ned who was near to her side.
When she moved her hand to reveal her finger again, he'd see that the small spiderwork of veins working their way back into her palm were bold and dark green, fading to invisibility past her wrist. He could see the color actively fading away, creeping slowly back toward her fingertip itself. She looked down at it with bewilderment, or what of that could show through the furrow-browed mask of pain.
"No! I was just trying to see if there were ghosts in the building."
Ned
"...See ghosts, why the-" Ned stops himself, hands upraised and breathing. Always breathing. Steadily breathing. He leans back into the couch with his eyes closed and lips pursed around the relaxation that normally comes with attempting to meditate. Easy enough to think this was some minor exercise he may have picked up off an after-school special or some failed attempt in college to take Yoga.
"Alright." His eyes pop open, still bloodshot but somewhat more alert than they had been a moment ago. He scrubs at them with his fingers, trying to push away the high (or perhaps dispensing with the remnants of his own Solving).
"So you just did some crafting...and got a burnt table and a hurt finger." Ned's pouring through what information he has from the Doc and his own experiences and seems to circle around possible options. Options that get discarded in favour of the actuality. He grimaces and sets his brow in his hand, leaning elbow to knee for support.
"So the Doc says we're not capable of this sort of thing yeah? We both know that too. Nothing we can really affects anything but our own perceptions...but here we are, you having burnt the table...and hurt yourself in the process." He pauses. Pinches his nose. "Which leaves the possibility that you either did something wrong-...which I'm not inclined to think you did." He says a bit rushed, lifting his face back up to regard the burnt table.
"Or Reality just came along and told you 'No'..."
Margot
"I'm pretty sure it's the latter," Margot supplied through gritted teeth. But for the most part she was relaxed now. The unnatural color had receded back to her finger alone by now and she was sitting with her feet planted on the floor, elbows on her knees, lightly crading her left wrist in her right hand. Watching the color crawl away, making sure that all of it left by the end of it.
"I did that same thing before, the night at the frat house. It's how we figured out what the hell was actually going on. It was weird-- we were out on the balcony but then the world around us just kind of went... black, like it fell away except for us and the building. And the elevator would just loop back to the same floor if you tried going up or down." She shook her head, and continued: "I could feel the physical structure of the building and the foundation, that they were all still grounded in the earth so I knew we didn't actually go anywhere. That ghost was shrouding the place and trying to keep us in."
Again, she didn't know why. Fuck that ghost. That ghost was an asshole.
"I'm gonna go wash this," she concluded, and stood up from the couch to go gingerly scrub her hand under cold water in the kitchen sink.
Ned
"There's gotta be an easier way than just...cutting yourself open all the time." He offers from the couch, watching her move into the Kitchen before returning to his coffee. He sips at it gently, eyes glancing at one of his hands which hovers in place while he drinks. Inspecting it for possible harm as well. Some sort of backlash that may be lingering in the air. Or...feeding off his own. Or making him hallucinate or an number of other-
The coffee mug is put down and he begins to breathe again.
"Fucking paranoia." He mutters, beneath the running faucet, inhaling and exhaling forcefully.
Margot
"That's what I've been thinking. I'm wondering about maybe.... I don't know, bottling up chicken blood maybe? It's strongest, it seems, right from the source. And if it's from a human too, I think." She frowned, adding thoughtfully: "I've never really tried killing an animal for their blood before. I don't get the feeling that shit donated from a butcher shop is going to appease anyone or anything into changing reality for me, though."
So as not to waste water, once the wound was clean she turned the faucet off. Running it under cold water probably wouldn't help much anyways, she doubted this played the same rules as an actual burn would.
Margot dried her hand on a paper towel and glanced back over to Ned to find him breathing in and out like he meant it, with force and focus behind an action that should be thoughtless and natural. Suddenly much less concerned with her own Paradox-addled cut, she frowned and moved back over near the couch.
"You alright?"
Ned
"Yeah I'm fine. Just some exercises I learned a while ago. Help to settle the nerves. Centre, zen, calm stuff-" He doesn't seem too invested, offering a small smile when she comes back.
"You're the one changing reality. So long as you recognize the Blood's the key, I doubt it'll matter. Belief, yeah? Believe the Butcher blood won't help it probably won't. Believe you have to bleed personally...well...that kind of says a lot about your willingness to suffer, doesn't it?"
He scrubs his face again, trying to push aside the high that's still lingering in his system.
"I think tonight was a success. Regardless of what actually happened, we managed to get some good information and...confirm a few things the Doc has been saying. I feel better going into his next lesson." There was a hint of expectation. Perhaps even anticipation in Ned's tone, though it didn't show much beyond a blank stare at the coffee table and it's new burn mark.
"It'll probably help a lot if we have these little meet ups after the lessons. Though...how much do you want to tell him about what we managed here?" He glances at her, a bit of uncertainty lingering in his features.
Margot
Ned earned himself a small wry grin at the comment about suffering. "It doesn't always have to be mine. Someone else's would work too, just as well I'm sure. Even better if I'm trying to read them directly." Her brow furrowed, and she sat down on the couch as well. Laced her fingers together so that her hands folded neatly into her lap. "But there has to be more to it than that. Other ways than just blood alone." She liked to believe herself to have more depth than just blood witch.
"I think we should be up front with the Doc. He has the decency to give us his time and help for free-- or, at least, free from what we can tell." She rubbed at her own face a little, the repeated habit wearing off on her to some degree.
"Besides, for all we know he probably has ways of finding out or knowing anyways. He's an Enlightened Mad Scientist, for all we know we're bugged."
As if his paranoia wasn't doing poorly enough.
Ultimately, Margot didn't seem to be in any rush to kick Ned out and get herself to bed. She was content to talk further, but when the point came goodbye would come as well. They'd meet with the Doc again soon, and who knows what they'd have to share by then.
No comments:
Post a Comment